


Come Out With Me

by hidley



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Exam Stress, Highschool AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 07:12:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1596164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hidley/pseuds/hidley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simmons is the type to start stressing about finals months before they start. And Grif is the type to tell him to calm the fuck down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Out With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Since it's exam season, have some Highschool Grimmons

'What are you doing tomorrow?'

Simmons glanced up from the table he was sat at, the creases in his forehead deepening further as he saw Grif standing in the door way, arms crossed against his chest and shoulder leant against the wooden frame. Not sparing him more than a wave of a hand, his eyes returned to the papers in front of him as he reached out for his coffee mug.

'I dunno. Watching TV,' he said flippantly. 'Revision and shit, you know how it is.'

Gaze cast downward, he didn't see the annoyed twist of Grif's lips, and how he adjusted himself on his shoulder so he leant more imposingly into the room. He was also completely oblivious to the act of nonchalance his room mate was attempting, and failing, to convey.

Grif cleared his throat deliberately, making a point to roughen the sound in hopes it would catch Simmons' attention. It didn't. 'Don't you think you should be doing something more worthwhile?' he asked, casually.

Simmons scoffed. 'What do you mean? Exams, man. They kinda take priority.'

'Not forever they don't.'

The tone in the other man’s voice was one Simmons was irritated to be familiar with, and he sighed. He had gone all day without distraction, and ever since he had moved in with Grif, such miracles were few and far between. The clock on his bed side table said 1:24am, but his head said Monday morning, and the caffeine swirling comfortably in his gut pushed the idea of sleep to the back of his mind. He thought that would not be the case for the other man, however, and he had assumed Grif had long since passed out in the other room. Clearly not.

Knowing he wasn't going to be able to concentrate until he was left alone again, Simmons let his pen fall and turned to face the older man in the doorway, twisting and cracking his stiff fingers. 'What are you talking about?' he asked.

Grif straightened slightly at the attention, and now Simmons was faced forward, the cyborg recognised the defensive posture in a heartbeat. This was going to be a long night.

'I said,' Grif answered, stiffly. ' They won't be that important forever. Ten years down the line you're not gunna give two shits about these things. You'll have moved on. Be spending your time travelling, making memories. You know, living and shit.'

The naivety in his friend's words made Simmons smile, impatience ebbing away into exasperated amusement. 'Yeah dipshit, and you know how you get to that point? By going to college and passing fucking exams. Its a process, you can't just miss out steps.'

He almost laughed out loud at Grif's instantaneous reply.

'Why not?'

'Because!' Simmons exclaimed only slightly too loudly. 'You just can't! It doesn't work that way. You build yourself up to where you wanna be, you can't just expect everything to be handed to you on a plate. Some things you have to fight for.'

He was taken off guard by the loud bark of a laugh Grif let out, as he gestured to the pile of paper on Simmons' desk. 'Writing six essays in an hour doesn't sound much like fighting,' he said, bitterness seeping into his tone.

The dig was weak, but whether it be because of sleep deprivation, or just a general intolerance for his pseudo-best friend's bullshit, it rubbed Simmons up the wrong way a treat, stealing the smile from his expression and his annoyed grimace returned. A rough 'Urgh' crept up his throat and he turned away again, picking up his pen with much sorer joints than before. 'Shut up, Grif,' he muttered, retracting his attention. 'You don't know anything.'

'The hell I don't.'

Simmons felt the man move further into the room and his grip on his pen tightened along with his jaw. 'I know how miserable these fucking things are making you. How stressed you are every day of the goddamn week. How upset you are when you come home-'

'It's just anxiety,' Simmons snapped. 'It happens to everyone. I'm perfectly fine.'

'Dude!' The red haired man heard the slap of his room mates hands on his sides, them most likely having been thrown up in the air in a disbelief that matched Grif's tone. 'You fucking threw up in the bathroom for an hour this morning! I can't get you to eat more than a fucking bowl of muesli every day and even then you never finish it!'

'Stress makes you lose your appetite. Look it up! It's one of the most common problems people have close to exams-'

'But you're not close!' Grif exploded. 'You're fucking months away from your first exam and you are already freaking out! That's not normal, dude, and it definitely  _doesn't_ happen to everyone.'

He sounded so sure that Simmons actually hesitated for a second before growling back at him. 'Don't be stupid of course it does.'

'No! It doesn't! No one gets so worked up about something so far away that they refuse to go to bed until they are passed on at their desk surrounded by fucking textbooks!' Grif had begun stamping around Simmons' room, and was now standing directly in the man's line of sight, shouting directly to his face. 'No one spends every day in the library with no break working their asses off and revising for an hour long exam when they are more than prepared for it! No one completely _ignores_  their friends so they can-'

A switch flicked in Simmons' head and suddenly he saw a foothold, something he could push back with. It didn't matter if he didn't believe it, he just couldn't let himself lose a battle he'd been fighting for the last month with various concerned family members. 'So that's what this is about?' He countered. 'You think I'm ignoring you?'

'Oh, don't be fucking prissy,' Grif instantly dodged the accusation, swinging himself away from Simmons in an overly dramatic gesture of disinterest. 'I don't care if you ignore me. I'm saying it ain't healthy to put so much pressure on yourself.'

Disliking the height difference between them, Simmons stood, his hands flat out on the desk, leaning his body into his words. 'Why the hell do you care?' he demanded.

Grif looked at him as if he'd just asked him how to tie his shoes, taken aback by the apparent absurdity of the question. 'Are you fucking kidding?' he said. 'You're my fucking friend, of course I care.'

'I don't see why you would.' Simmons said, lifting his arms and folding them across his chest, acutely aware of the change of roles between the two of them. 'It doesn't exactly effect you, does it?'

'But it effects _you_! That's the whole point!'

'I'm fine.'

'Fine?' Grif said, disbelievingly. ' _Fine_? Okay, if you're so FINE then I want you do something for me.'

'Okay, what?' Simmons bit out, already sick of the argument and happy to end it. 'What do I have to fucking do?'

'I want you to stop.' Grif said. 'Stop what you are doing right now, and come out with me.'

Simmons wasn't quite expecting that, and it took him a moment to process what was being asked of him. After replaying it in his head a couple of times and determining that yes, Grif did just suggest ending an argument with a bender, he scoffed and his arms dropped from their defensive gesture. 'Grif, that's stupid.'

Apparently undeterred, the man across from him moved rapidly across the room, back towards the door, shrugging and waving Simmons' words off impatiently. 'Yeah alright whatever, it's stupid. Do it anyway. Come out with me.'

They'd been friends a long time. Long enough for Simmons to know exactly what his room mate saw as 'going out', and the strange request for a night of drinking was rejected in his head long before he expressed it out loud. 'I don't want to have to be around your drunk ass all night. I'd rather stay in.'

'We won't get drunk.' Grif said, immediately, now standing back beside the door frame. 'We won't even go to a bar.'

Confused, Simmons disregarded his irritation and instead just rose to the bait, grabbing at it disinterestedly. 'Well then what the hell are you suggesting we do?' he asked.

He watched as Grif shrugged and folded his arms. Seems like they both had a nervous habit. 'I dunno, we'll go walking around town or something. Grab a burger, go to the movies, I don't know. Just out.'

Somewhat understanding what his room mate was trying to say, albeit in the most round about way possible, Simmons briefly considered insisting on a more explicit explanation before realising that he honestly couldn't bring himself to give two shits about how this ended, as long as it did. 'You want me to take a break, is that what you're saying?' he laid out, tiredly.

'Yes!' Grif said, hand shooting out as if Simmons had just drawn pure gold from the air and sewn it into a sentence. 'I want you to take a fucking break.'

 _Un-fucking-believable_ , was the first word that came to mind as Simmons rolled his eyes so far back into his skull he could see metal. It was like Grif was incapable of expressing himself in a way other than five-hour periods of aggressively beating round the bush before he could finally get his fucking point across. He couldn't just say, 'Hey, Simmons. You've been working too hard man, let's go out', it had to be a mixture of passive aggressive hints and well-intended, though miscommunicated insults. Never simple, always frustratingly complex and unnecessarily vague.

The weight of three days straight studying suddenly seemed a lot heavier to him than it had at the start of this exchange, and Simmons blamed it entirely on the fact that Grif had bought the wrong damn coffee the day before, and so he'd had to work fuelled only by cheap ass bean water that he had to take three mugs of to equal the energy just one of what decent stuff would have supplied him with. He was sure his intake was somewhere in the high twenties, if the mess of coffee rings burned into the wood of his desk were anything to go by. He glanced over at his work, a warm flush of satisfaction settling in his stomach at the sight of hundreds of sheets of practise essays and structure plans. His third pen this week sat abandoned on the sheet on top, and the pain in Simmons' fingers flared up at the thought of picking it up again.

Perhaps a break wouldn't be the worst idea.

'Fine,' he said, turning back towards Grif, who by the look on his face, had just had his day fucking made. 'Okay, we'll go out.'

Grif grinned, widely. 'Thank Christ-'

'After I'm done with this paper.'

It was a tease, but the severity of the drop of Grif's smile was priceless.

'God, dude _no._  Right now. We gotta go right now.'

'Why is that- Hey!' Simmons cried out in surprise as Grif surged forwards and grabbed his arm firmly, tugging him out of the bedroom. 'Get off me!'

'Nope,' the other man replied stubbornly, still pulling Simmons mercilessly towards the front door. 'No, we are putting our fucking shoes on and going right this fucking minute.'

'Grif, stop being so fucking ridiculous. Let me at least finish the sentence.'

'No.' The edge in Grif's voice was final. 'You can finish it tomorrow.'

Holding back a laugh, Simmons continued provoking the angry, pudgy man. 'You're being childish.'

'And you're supposed to be proving to me you don't have a problem. Yet here we fucking are.'

'Dude, it's like one in the morning. Where the hell we gunna go?'

'Like I said, walking. And the arcade will probably still be open right?'

'Doubt it.'

'Then we'll just fucking walk okay?' Grif eventually released Simmons' arm as they reached the front door, and turned to him, his face actually red from his apparently irritation. 'You got a problem with that?'

Seeing Simmons' teasing smirk, Grif deflated a bit and ducked his head away from his room mates amused gaze. Simmons' smile widened.

'No, not at all.'

'Good,' Grif said roughly, his voice slightly off. 'Then lets fucking go then.'

He grabbed both their jackets and threw Simmons' maroon one right in his face, though it did nothing to dampen the man's expression as he caught it before it hit him and slipped it on, leaning down to shove his flat shoes on his bare feet, not caring about the possibility of blisters. When he looked up, Grif was already dressed and stood with the door held open, watching Simmons with a raised eyebrow and a _You're going to regret that later_ clear in his eyes.

Simmons shrugged and walked through the open door out into their street, and waited at the end of the path as Grif locked up and hid a key underneath a plant pot just by the door. Simmons had told him countless times not to do something so cliché, and that when they inevitably were robbed of the very few things they had, he wasn't going to be the one to buy a new Xbox. But of course, the other man shrugged it off and continued to do it anyway, and Simmons soon got sick of pestering him.

Grif eventually met him at the bottom of the path and they started walking down the road towards the train station that went into town, gait soon synchronising like it always did The silence between them wasn't uncomfortable, it rarely ever was, but Simmons broke it anyway just for the sake of playing Devil's advocate.

'You realise this is kinda like a date right?'

All he got was a scoff in reply, and a casual, 'I don't care. You just need to get away from those fucking books.'

Simmons lips tugged into a small grin. 'Never knew you cared.'

'Yeah well, clearly you don't know me very well then,' Grif replied, turning his head to the man beside him, who met his gaze halfway. They smiled lightly at each other for a while, before Simmons faced forward again and altered his stride so they weren't walking in unison, although knowing fully well it was pointless as it would reset itself soon enough.

'....I guess I should be grateful,' he said.

Grif didn't even bother looking away when he replied, 'You don't have to be jack shit. Just don't say a fucking word about mechanics for the next 24 hours and I'll make sure you have the fucking time of your life.'

Simmons chuckled.

'Okay, deal.'


End file.
